Illinois Basketball: Projected roster rotation and minutes for 2024-25 season
Coming off the heels of its deepest postseason run since the 2005 runner-up squad, the 2024-25 Illinois Fighting Illini will look vastly different when it takes the court in November. According to BartTorvik’s preseason rankings, Illinois returns only 14.2% of its minutes. That’s the second-lowest number in the new-look 18-team Big Ten, only behind USC. Gone are the likes of Terrance Shannon Jr., Coleman Hawkins (K-State), Marcus Domask, Quincy Guerrier, Dain Dainja (Memphis) and Luke Goode (Indiana), among others.
However, despite the many losses, Brad Underwood wouldn’t let the Big Ten's winningest program in conference games over the past five years fall from relevance. This offseason, Underwood aggressively hit the transfer portal and the recruiting trail, landing a plethora of highly-coveted transfers and high-upside recruits.
Entering the 2024-25 season, talent will not be an issue in Champaign. Illinois ranks second in the country in talent, only behind the reigning back-to-back champs thanks to its top-20 transfer portal and recruiting classes, according to 24/7 Sports. Talent alone is a key reason why the Illini remain one of the biggest mysteries in college basketball next season.
On one hand, its ceiling is off the charts thanks to its positional size and NBA potential. If the pieces click and Underwood pushes the right buttons on and off the court, this group has a second-weekend, Big Ten regular-season-championship upside written all over it -- for years ahead, too. Because many of Illinois' 2024-25 pieces have additional years of eligibility remaining, there is the possibility Brad Underwood retains many of its talented pieces from this year's group. However, on the other hand, keeping everybody happy on a younger roster crowded with individual talent is a difficult task considering this is a new-look team with many unfamiliar faces in an ever-changing landscape.
As stated before, it's not a rebuild in Champaign, it's a reload. With plenty of mystery and intrigue surrounding its roster and minutes dispersion, take a look at Illinois’ projected depth chart as the 2024-25 college basketball season begins to slowly, yet surely, approach.